


Something much more wonderful

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, Feels, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 10:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Anton tries to ask Viktor out. It doesn't go the way both of them anticipated.





	Something much more wonderful

“Are you engaged tonight, Mr. Watcher?”

“I’m certain I don’t have an appointment with _you_ , Mr. Rogue.”

The silence that follows his words is troubling, and Viktor lifts his head from his laptop.

Anton looks… wounded, his mouth twisted as though tasting something sour. “You don’t have to be such an obstinate bastard all the time, you know,” Anton says, and there’s bitterness in his voice and in the way he half-shrugs, as though trying to get rid of pain, of a weight on his back. “Especially when I’m trying to ask you out.”

Viktor thinks he _has_ to. Has to push away, push back, tease, provoke, fight — because otherwise Anton might lose interest (hasn’t lost in fifteen years, but the fear is still present, matured and strong).

Anton stands there, on the soft carpet of Viktor’s office, shifts from foot to foot. With years, he had trained himself to curb fidgeting — but it spills out, a giveaway of his exhaustion, of emotions. He is an emotional man, and expressing what he feels comes easily to him — something Viktor admires, envies and knows to be a weakness.

Anton is never awkward — he strides through life with confidence and takes whatever he wants (because otherwise he would be given nothing) — but now, here, he looks like he _might_ be awkward. Like he _might_ be tired, like those shadows under his eyes are not merely from sleepless nights of building his networks and making his deals. He shaves his head and his cheeks and his chin (his brows arched handsomely, his ridiculously long eyelashes giving him an enticing air — those eyelashes give away the striking red color of his hair when sun shines over them), but Viktor knows there is silver in his stubble, and nightmares have never left him.

Their eyes meet, and then Anton drops his gaze. “I’m leaving.”

This is… unacceptable.

Viktor gets up. “No. Anton, wait.”

Anton stands.

The winter is mild and wet, but even if it had been colder, Anton would have been wearing the same outfit he’s wearing now: a white shirt, a cream sweater, old sturdy jeans, and a black leather jacket. Anton can afford to dress in the most expensive garments — and he does have a couple of suits for certain occasions — but despite that he prefers the jacket that has served him for decades.

“Can’t we be normal, for once?”

Viktor moves from behind his desk. He wants to say that they can’t because they _aren’t_ — but he understands what Anton means. They hardly need words these days.

He goes to Anton, his figure impossibly lonely, and closes his arms around him. The leather creaks under the embrace. Anton’s skin smells of winter cold, and it’s so pale that blood vessels visible under it give him the quality of a porcelain doll — if there ever was a doll of a violent, underhanded bastard with a mouth full of obscenities and poetry.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor murmurs. Standing even a step away from Anton, he would have never said that, wouldn’t have known how to say that. But, pressed to Anton from behind, he knows, and it doesn’t sound wrong or false or ridiculous.

“I must be hallucinating,” Anton grumbles. “You never say sorry. You never _are_ sorry.”

“I am now. I’m not lying.”

“You never say the truth. That’s not the same as not lying.”

Irritation prickles Viktor from the inside. He’s not sure whether Anton is goading him on purpose, and he doesn’t want to let go and doesn’t want to have a fight, not right now.

But Anton doesn’t move out of his embrace either.

The world is quiet save for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the faint creaking of leather as Anton breathes in and out, in and out.

If something breaks this moment, Viktor is going to break that something in return.

“I’m so tired, Vitya,” Anton says quietly.

Viktor startles. It’s so strange to heart Anton so soft outside of very tight constraints of rare nights they share together.

And Viktor’s heart jumps to his throat, years and years and years of digging for hidden meaning behind words of others suddenly stripped away. His fears rising and choking him. Anton can’t mean… He _can’t_.

“Anton—”

“Marry me.”

His arms falls to his sides, and he makes a step back — without thinking. “What.”

Anton turns to him, wets his lips. Viktor holds back from doing the same: mirroring others is a useful skill, ingrained in him from years of training himself — but Anton always notices when he does that (and more than once Viktor had received a heavy punch to the face for it; both of them are violent men).

And then another thing twists Anton’s face, the worst thing in the world: disappointment.

Viktor bristles. “Are you mad?”

Anton huffs — a dismissive sound. “Thought so. You don’t even know what it’s like.” His lips twist, corners of the mouth Viktor has kissed so many times dropping. “When your country wants you to be quiet, invisible — or better, to never exist at all — and then I came here, and it became possible, and I _could_ — but wouldn’t, because _you_ wouldn’t, because you…” The leather creaks again as Anton’s right fist flies up — and hovers, and drops, and his shoulders stoop.

“What,” Viktor says again — but he _knows_ what. “Anton, I’m not—”

“Back in Russia,” Anton talks over him, as though not listening, as though not wanting to listen, “it is considered bad luck to celebrate your fortieth birthday. I’m too old to start my life from scratch for the fourth time, but I will, if you tell me to fuck off. I’ll leave three, four states between us, if you want. Or move to Europe.” Never to Russia. Anton misses his city of birth violently, but he will never return, Viktor knows.

“It’s unfair,” Viktor manages, his mouth dry. “To place the decision in my hands alone.”

“Wasn’t it always in your hands alone?”

When agitated, Anton’s accent becomes stronger. It’s not Russian, but French. English is not his first, not second, not even third language. Viktor knows odd bits about Anton: he’s a philologist, he hates champagne, there is a childhood bicycle accident scar on his left knee; he loves Christmas lights. Odd bits — but they are significant.

Viktor can’t imagine knowing all that — and Anton not being _here_ to add other things to that knowledge.

Fifteen years is a long time to keep pretense.

He leans to Anton again, like a pendulum, slides his hands up Anton’s neck, takes his face, brings their foreheads together, closes his eyes. “I want you,” he whispers.

He doesn’t have to rehearse things with Anton, doesn’t have to fret over how it would come out, what gestures to make. Anton might mock him and they might have a fight, Anton storming out and Viktor himself stiff and numb with pride. But, fifteen years. They always return to each other.

Anton huffs, against his lips. “What, right now? We both know that your office couch is not very comfortable.”

Viktor takes it as the joke it is, and takes the worry he feels more than hears in it, as an undercurrent. Uncertainty.

“Here. Right now. _Always_. Ask me again, Tosha.”

Anton’s breathing turns shaky, and he is silent for a few moments. Viktor hears his throat click, then Anton asks, “Will you marry me?” Quietly, in the tiny space between them.

Viktor smiles, a burning behind his eyelids. “Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> The game: these two are Horrible and hate each other  
> Me: but consider: they are also in love
> 
> I planned to write Porn with Feels, and then whacked myself with so much Feels I couldn't manage the vegetable part.  
> The fault is on the Spiders Discord server folks.  
> I'm a terrible sap, but that's not news.
> 
> [The song for this fic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K3hpb-wijU).


End file.
